


Moments From a Story Unwritten

by Squornshellous_Beta



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Not per se a proper story, and some short excerpts from the full story, more like a general idea, not by me at least, which shall never be written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 07:42:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3241715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squornshellous_Beta/pseuds/Squornshellous_Beta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few scattered scenes from a larger, untold narrative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Conversation That Started It All

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter isn't a story but the conversation that kicked off the idea, so please don't go into it expecting otherwise. Or if you do, don't complain to me about it. It took place before The Time of the Doctor aired, so obviously it doesn't take into account what happened therein or thereafter.

Squornshellous Beta: There are unpleasant rumors he's going to bring about the end of Doctor Who, but I'm choosing to disbelieve them.  
Squornshellous Beta: I don't like endings.  
Aenrhien: Moffat's an ascended fanboy, he won't end Doctor Who.  
Squornshellous Beta: Not necessarily intentionally.  
Squornshellous Beta: But yeah, as I say, I don't trust mere rumor.  
Aenrhien: He might unintentionally cause the end of Doctor Who in its current form, but some other ascended fanboy would come to power, declare it all a dream and bang, new Doctor Who starting with a new Ninth Doctor.  
Squornshellous Beta: It would probably take slightly more waving of hands than that.  
Aenrhien: Actually, that's the sort of thing I'd do if put in charge of Doctor Who. I did it once already for a quest I wrote for Realms of Kaos that never got implemented.  
Squornshellous Beta: Perhaps some instability would be caused in the universe by the way he ended the Time War and eventually the only way out would be to shred everything that'd happened since then, leaving Eight with the memories of the future but before he could bring it to bear. That seems like a handwave that would... well, it'd inspire rage in the fandom, but it's more plausible than "all just a dream".  
Aenrhien: That was just a catch-all term for "some timey-wimey nonsense makes reboot-era Who non-canon".  
Squornshellous Beta: My way's better, it'd still be partially canon that way.  
Squornshellous Beta: In that the Doctor would totally remember it, and presumably so would the TARDIS for what that's worth to us as viewers, and perhaps whatever companion he had at the time also.  
Squornshellous Beta: It'd be a neat excuse to see him use even a fraction of the full power of a TARDIS, too, if we wanted to go that route.  
Aenrhien: I'm starting to like this idea more than I should.  
Squornshellous Beta: For instance, it'd probably be the TARDIS herself that did the reboot.  
Squornshellous Beta: Perhaps over a series or so he'd gradually find out the universe was destabilizing, a la the cracks. Eventually he'd come to the conclusion that there was no way to fix it, or even to halt it as it were, and he'd quite possibly sacrifice himself to give the TARDIS enough inspiration to avert the timeline before it ever happened - if in every timeline where she didn't intervene he would end up killing himself, she, caring for him as she does, would inevitably do just that.  
Squornshellous Beta: His sacrifice merges his mind with the TARDIS fully for long enough for her to get a full backup of his memories, perhaps, and it echoes back through time; before he can push The Button and seal the Time War, she slams the whole lot into his mind, the entire future having, from an objective perspective, happened only in her dislocated-in-time perspective.  
Squornshellous Beta: And then he does something big and fancy and timey-wimey with the aid of the TARDIS to stop the Time War in a less universe-breaky way and goes on to have adventures as usual.  
Squornshellous Beta: If I was writing this, and possibly only if it was a novel instead of a show, it would totally be TARDIS-POV most of the way through, but I can't imagine that'd be easy or even possible to accurately portray on TV.  
Squornshellous Beta: It does sound pretty interesting, doesn't it.  
Aenrhien: It does.  
Squornshellous Beta: Not bad for something that started out as my mind, of all minds it could be, coming up with the first thing it came up with for something more plausible than "all just a dream".  
Squornshellous Beta: Ideas and storytelling are, after all, very much not my thing. They're about as far from my thing as it is possible for a thing to be.

[...]

Squornshellous Beta: If I was a halfway competent writer I would probably write the thing I did up there at some point. But I'm not, so I won't. Ah well. C'est la vie.  
Squornshellous Beta: Especially since, as presented there, it would require a series of stories that could stand apart to thread the overarching universe-destruction thing through.  
Squornshellous Beta: Even if I could write the main event, thinking up and writing a season's worth of adventures is definitely beyond me.  
Aenrhien: I would write it and give you complete credit for the idea, but I have enough crap to be writing without adding to it. And that would be like plagiarizing.  
Squornshellous Beta: It wouldn't be like plagiarizing since you'd have permission, but yeah.

[...]

Squornshellous Beta: As the idea expands in my head, it becomes apparent to me that some of the ideas involved share a striking similarity to events that have transpired in actual episodes, which probably explains where it's come from.  
Squornshellous Beta: For instance, the basic premise of the universe being destroyed and memories of it remaining sounds like The Big Bang; the idea of it emerging through an entire series... well, that's a basic storytelling thing, but it most parallels the cracks in my mind; and I can't help but imagine the first thing that would begin to worry the Doctor would be things, like entire planets, not existing that really should, which is similar to both the cracks and the planets that were stolen for Davros' doomsday bomb.  
Aenrhien: Reality bomb.  
Squornshellous Beta: It was also a doomsday bomb.  
Squornshellous Beta: In my mind the very first mention of it comes just after he disembarks from the TARDIS in the first "episode" of the "season", where he tries to point out a constellation that includes Sol but notices one of the stars is missing. He dismisses it, at first, as likely just being a planet or something in front of it.  
Squornshellous Beta: A much harder-to-ignore sign comes significantly later on, when he tries to land the TARDIS on a particular planet and the TARDIS can't find it through all of time and space.  
Squornshellous Beta: Perhaps the easiest way to deal with the similarities to the cracks would be to lampshade it; perhaps by having him initially suspect that a TARDIS explosion was in the future yet again, and do some timey-wimey thingy to rule it out.  
Squornshellous Beta: This is amusingly and astonishingly well-developed as far as ideas in my head go.  
Aenrhien: That'll make it easier for me to plagiarize in the future if I opt to include it as part of the thing with my fic.  
Squornshellous Beta: This is true.  
Squornshellous Beta: I guess whatever adventures would take place would have to be earth-centric at the beginning, with the possible exception of that very first one; it's a lot harder to note that something is missing from the sky without having the Doctor explicitly notice and point it out if nobody knows the sky.  
Squornshellous Beta: And that made very little sense. Clarifying: the easiest way to show something being missing is to have the Doctor explicitly observe it, but he can't catch on too early or the whole thing comes to a head too fast. No human companion - or reader - would know what to expect of an alien sky, so the narration couldn't subtly mention it unless it took place on earth.

[...]

Squornshellous Beta: Do you know what would be even more amusing as a "subtle" hint to the overarching plot if one had the skill for it?  
Aenrhien: Constant mention of the bees disappearing?  
Squornshellous Beta: Disguising said hint as a writer error. I'm imagining a conflict where the Doctor starts out suspecting a minor party, maybe a little family of aliens, who aren't native to the planet it's set on, but they turn out to be utterly irrelevant to the actual plot, and nobody ever mentions them again even though someone earlier promised to help them with something.  
Squornshellous Beta: And then when the whole thing is revealed, it turns out that their planet and its history vanished partway through, preventing anyone from properly remembering them - the way this interferes with memories is, by the way, either inconsistent or much less pronounced on the Doctor, who we've already seen resists that sort of thing well.  
Squornshellous Beta: If the latter, it would have to be the companion who promised them aid and while the Doctor wasn't in earshot or else he'd remember enough to go back, but that'd be easy to arrange.  
Squornshellous Beta: Because I imagine that at least one comment on the fic would go "hey, what happened to the alien family who needed help?" and everyone would assume it a plot hole, and then bam, planned all along.  
Aenrhien: Hehehe.  
Squornshellous Beta: I like the idea that it's inconsistent better than the idea that the Doctor can shrug it off.  
Squornshellous Beta: It helps drive home how there's absolutely no way to fix it besides stopping it ever happening in the first place; if he can resist it, it's got limits to its destructiveness.


	2. Story Time

"...And so I've always felt that the real moral of that story is 'don't be a cyclops'." The Doctor looked very pleased with himself for a few moments, then all at once his expression collapsed into a confused frown. "I had a point somewhere in there. I seem to have misplaced it."

"Doctor," said Alex in the patient tones of someone who has been trying something for the past half-hour without ever actually believing it would work. She was lying in some kind of hammock-like array of netting which the Doctor had taken one look at, declared faulty, and never acknowledged or even looked at again; if he was right, Alex had yet to find out how. She was pretty sure it was borrowed from a pirate ship or some such thing and had, accordingly, seized upon it with great abandon.

Which wasn't to say that the TARDIS' interior actually resembled a boat. The current desktop theme seemed to be "Earth anachronistic", a bizarre and semi-random arrangement of features from human vessels and transports through the ages. The Doctor himself was sat in something Alex guessed was from the future, which resembled the offspring of some unholy union between a chair, an egg, and an octopus. The theme should have been a hideous mess of contrasts, but somehow it all worked out to a cohesive whole.

Perhaps, Alex had mused, it was an obscure metaphor for the Doctor and herself; contrast did seem to be something of a running theme with them, after all. The Doctor - this Doctor, at least - was a tall man, very tall, with a stern face, a light tan, a sharp formal suit, and an honest-to-God _cane_ , who moved with a quiet dignity and had the sort of presence one could only perfect over the thousands of years he had lived. Those millennia were nowhere more obvious than in his eyes; more than one would-be tyrant or tinpot dictator had broken down into hysterics when they got a good look at their depths. But the effect was completely spoiled when he opened his mouth; rather than the Received Pronunciation (or, if you listened to Americans, "British" - heathens, the lot of them) you would expect, he had an accent he identified as coming from a charming man he once met in Cornwall, years ago. It was impossible to take him entirely seriously when he was babbling on at a thousand miles an hour about his time spent among aliens with nine brains, or his bizarre metaphors that ought to be taken out back and shot, or that one time he accidentally invented corn.

Alex herself, meanwhile, was his opposite in almost every way. Middle Eastern in appearance, tiny in every respect, and with the energy and perpetual cheer more typical of a child, she could nevertheless summon the seriousness, stillness, and respect that the situations they ran into so often required, though she had to admit she had only really mastered it after nearly getting herself killed on her first few excursions. Over the two and a half years she'd been travelling with the Doctor (she had asked that they go to a good watch shop early on; they had exposed a thousand-year conspiracy that would have plunged six planets into anarchic chaos and walked out with a beautiful wristwatch for their efforts, which the Doctor had immediately set upon. Now it could survive anything short of a point-blank nuclear explosion, synchronized with local timekeepers from sundials to satellites, automatically calculated the day and year length thanks to some kind of hideously complicated astronomic geometry, had a perception filter to avoid anyone noticing how much it could do, and played the Mexican Hat Dance on command; she had insisted, though, that he left it the ability to keep track of her own personal timeline, so she knew how long it had been) she had also learned that the best way to deal with the Doctor once he started talking was simply to let him go on, interjecting occasionally in the hopes that he might actually remember there was someone else in the room. So as he moved on to yet another anecdote, she simply lay in her hammock, hung her head over the side, and watched him upside-down.

"...So these people, they were planning a time-travel trip to record a documentary: The Origins and Natural Life of the Common Squeevil. Nature documentaries were big at the time, you see. Squeevils were - still are, I suppose - a pest on virtually every spaceship, like how rats could be found on every ship back on Earth. Sort of like a cross between a rat and a cockroach, except with glossy purple fur and a midnight-blue carapace. They make wonderful pets; smart as anything if you start training them early enough and _so_ friendly. But they never really took off, because everyone hated them, because they were pests. Kind of sad, isn't it? They led to the invention of the Timeless Stasis Cargo Storage Unit, too, because people were so determined to make something they couldn't get into."

"The... TSCSU?" _Damn, shouldn't encourage him. He'll only keep going even longer._

"Right, I figure they ran out of good acronyms a couple hundred years before. But anyway, their documentary. So they got these powerful computers set up and created the most beautiful environmental monitoring slash calculation system I've still ever seen, tracked back where the squeevils must have come from. A pretty young planet, all told, with no intelligent life to notice what they were doing. They set up their shunts - it was the early days of time travel yet, and their technology was kind of _messy_ , so they could only do one trip at a time, had to wait about a month on both ends before they could do another. If they tried doing it sooner, well, I don't like going to those times. It's like the air tastes so much of peppermint that you can almost chew it, except it isn't a taste, it's _time_. No it isn't. But it's sort of. Well, no. But-"

"Doctor?"

"Right, yes, rambling, I know."

"No, I was going to-"

"So they got their film crew all packed up," he spoke over whatever she had been about to say. "A few environmental engineers, plus a portable version of the envcomp - that's what they called it, because nobody can be bothered to say 'environmental monitoring slash calculation system' every time, you see. And they got in their shunt capsule and-" he made a sound that no human could ever replicate, half of which she was pretty sure was outside of her range of hearing, "into the past. They got set up like they planned, looked around, and started to worry: no squeevils. Not a one. Their time-travel technician, a fellow by the name of Jeffrey, young and kind of new to the job, checked around and made sure they were in the right place and time; they were. The envcomp told them that there were no squeevils, never had been any squeevils, and furthermore it couldn't see where in any ecosystem on the planet the squeevils would fit; there weren't any big environmental niches that needed filling, none that could plausibly lead to a squeevil evolving at least.

"Now, this naturally worried them quite a lot. After all, this is where the squeevils started out. And they knew there were squeevils in the future. Young Jeffrey suggested a theory: what if it was one of those big paradox cults that had started cropping up since time travel kicked off?"

"Doctor, what-"

"What's a paradox cult? Well, the clue's kind of in the name: a cult that wants to make paradoxes. Try and keep up. They thought it was their solemn duty to use this exciting new time-travel technology to start poking holes in causality, or some such thing. They very quickly became illegal, but nobody ever managed to squash them entirely, and the rumor goes that a few planets that should exist don't because of them. Ridiculous, of course; that's not how paradoxes work at all. But we can't go around blaming the new kids, can we? Not their fault they don't know.

"So anyway, they were rightly worried about this whole thing. If it was a paradox cult, they thought, then they were a lot more well-organized than they had known; would have to be, to so seamlessly remove an entire species from time. But! But but but but _but_ , one of them came up with a clever solution. Here, he said, we are, with our envcomp and our time-tech, right in what should be the early days of the squeevils. Why don't we fix it? We can avoid the whole problem, and when we get homewhen, decry the paradox cults for changing something so big, get the public behind a campaign against them!"

" _Dooooooc_ tor," Alex singsonged. He ignored it, as she expected. "Do you even hear me? Is it just like I'm not actually here?"

"Everyone liked that idea, so they set to it. The envcomp told them how to nudge the ecosystem so that a few well-placed squeevils, cloned from DNA samples on record, could entrench themselves and fix history. They did some brilliantly moving bits to camera about the kind of people who would risk such a catastrophe as to change the past, got some nature shots, the whole lot. There was a lot of patting each other on the back, and once their month was up they shunted back to their own present. They told their bosses about what happened, and some of the best time-travel scientists were called in to consult.

"Imagine their embarrassment," the Doctor said with the air of one building to a hilarious punchline, "when it turned out _they were where the squeevils came from all along!_ Ah, cracks me up every time. You couldn't make it up."

"Doctor..."

"Of _course_ I hear you," he retorted suddenly, for all the world acting as though she'd only just asked. "What were you going to say?"

"I was going to say this is all very interesting and such, don't get me wrong, but what exactly does any of this have to do with my asking where we're going for dinner?"

"Not a thing, Alex," the Doctor replied, clearly very pleased with himself. "Not a single thing at _all._ "


	3. Davros and the Last Dalek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, like the idea as a whole, predates The Time of the Doctor. It wouldn't require a great deal of reworking to fit in with that, but don't get on my case about the fact that it doesn't, okay?

"Davros. Davros of the Kaleds. Do you understand just how many people your creations have killed, how many lives they ruined? Do you even care? Including mine! Those repulsive things -" his face was contorted in a rictus of fury that would not have seemed out of place on a Dalek's own face, if they had faces which could show emotion - "those _hideous, hate-filled creatures_ cost me my entire world! Everyone I had known, Davros, everyone I loved... and you can't even begin to understand that pain. Nothing I could do would make you understand. You're _broken_ , Davros, and I should leave you here to die."

The ground shook again, much more strongly this time. The planet would not survive for much longer. The lone Dalek, armor emitting periodic sparks, tried vainly to aim its blaster at the Doctor; he didn't even deign to spare it a glance. In a labored voice, Davros spoke.

"The Doctor. The man who makes men better. That is the role you've thrust upon yourself, isn't it? While I myself have never understood the feeling I do know you style yourself a compassionate man. Can you bring yourself to abandon me - a sapient being in distress - to my death? Could you look me in the eye as you left here?"

"Yes." It was an uncharacteristically blunt answer, and the Doctor's expression had not changed once during Davros' speech. A speech like that might have been effective from other men, even those he hated. But Davros was the one exception. He himself had never felt an ounce of pity, of remorse; why should the Doctor afford him that luxury?

For possibly the first time in Davros' long life, his voice took on just a hint of emotion besides megalomania; he was genuinely terrified, despite his insanity. "Please, Doctor. Please. I don't want to die."

Something imperceptible changed in the Doctor's expression. The earthquake worsened; small cracks began to open in the ground beneath them. His companion stuck her head out of the TARDIS doors and called him: "Doctor! This planet is about to come apart, we have to _go_!"

He did not move, flickers of expression flashing over his face too fast to read as he agonized over the decision...

That wouldn't...

Change.

He pointed his screwdriver at Davros' robotic body and it hummed briefly; Davros flexed his limbs experimentally before making to dash for the TARDIS.

And in an instant, the Doctor was in front of him. Shock registered briefly on Davros' face; how could he move so fast, even exhausted as he was? The screwdriver, now, was pointing directly at the power core of his body, at his "heart". "I warn you, Davros. Make a single move in my or her direction, even think to harm us or subvert the TARDIS to your own ends, and I will shut down every circuit in your body. Even you can't survive that."

The Dalek tried to move again. "And that thing stays here. The last of your creations; the Dalek race ends here, make no mistake. I will not fight them again, not in this universe. I only wish it could feel the grief and fear any _real_ creature would in its place."

"I understand your terms, Doctor. I won't try anything, you have my word."

"Your word. Got a penny instead? They're more useful. But then I don't need to trust you, do I." His screwdriver buzzed again, underlining his point. "Get in. Now."

Davros did. For just a moment, out of sheer habit, he began thinking of strategies to gain control of the ship, but shut down that line of thought hard when he realized its foolishness. The Doctor entered the ship behind him and closed the doors.

And then the planet was no more - had never even been - and the TARDIS faded out of being, leaving the last Dalek, its armor too damaged for propulsion, to float alone for the rest of its (long; Davros had engineered them well) life through the endless void.


	4. Doctor Who?

_Are you sure you need to do this?_ conveyed his TARDIS; not in words, of course, for telepathic communication would never be so simple as to use words unless you had a more powerful telepath simplifying it for you; but nevertheless she conveyed it, and he understood.

_Yes,_ he returned. _We need your sisters and my people to be able to do this and you know it. You can't not know it, any more than I could not know how to breathe; less, even, far less. And you know that too, and we've gone recursive, and you're stalling. Stop it._

She rumbled apologetically, and fell silent. With that done, his perception shifted along axes no human could ever perceive, nor even comprehend; and he found the weakness, the hole in the walls of the universe, and the message bellowing endlessly - insofar as such a concept could have meaning on a scale that was both timeless and greater than Time - from it; the message that he alone in the universe could ever understand in full, free from the distortion and simplification of the telepathic translation of the Time Lords; the message whose encryption had been imprinted deeply into his mind the instant he had heard and understood its words, so deeply that he could never expunge it without destroying everything that defined him in the process.

And the message spoke: "Doctor who?"

He performed a mental action that, simplified almost infinitely, could be interpreted as clearing his throat, and shifted his thoughts from English to Old High Gallifreyan, in which the message was broadcast and to which it would respond; for the Time Lords would never have risked anyone but him speaking his name, there were few ways for others to learn it but there _were_ ways, but no "lesser" species could understand Gallifreyan languages to a degree even appropriate to a newborn.

And the message, which was also an entity and a perception and very much more, turned its attention upon him; it felt, in terms a human might understand, like a trillion trillion eyes all looking upon him at once, which was roughly what it was; the combined psychic presence of every Time Lord who had ever existed or ever would, and indeed those who never had and never would; for Gallifrey was sealed outside the universe not only in one moment but in all possible timelines, and Gallifrey had many.

And the message spoke: "Doctor who?"

He expanded, folding outwards along those same axes and more, and his companion wondered at the sight; for he had not only length and breadth and depth but other things besides, and she could _almost_ perceive them, a nagging sensation like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, and she could feel his mind around her, drowning in a psychic sea - but the sea was safety, too, and care, and compassion; for he would ever protect the beings of the universe;

And the message spoke: "Doctor who?"

And he spoke his true name, three syllables of Old High Gallifreyan that echoed throughout every universe in which the message could be heard, not as sound but as thought; and every being in those universes, at some point in their lives, shuddered at an incomprehensible feeling of depth, of connection to a greater whole;

And the message heard, and understood, and said "yes";

A form of the word which even few Time Lords had ever used, for that "yes" expressed complete understanding, and acceptance, and trust, and relief, throughout all the past, all the present, and all the future; it had always been, and always would be, the simple and intuitive truth; yet with many layers of deeper meaning, such that philosophers could spend lifetimes and never even scratch the surface;

And the walls of the universe tore asunder, and time and space rearranged themselves to accomodate a planet that had now always been there, now had never been gone;

And Gallifrey was.


End file.
